SQUATTER SETTLEMENT

SQUATTER SETTLEMENT

SQUATTER: Squatting is the act of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied space or building, usually residential, as quarter does not own, rent or otherwise have permission to use the land or building.

A squatter settlement can be defined as a residential area which has developed as a residential area which has no legal claims to the land and or permission from the concerned authorities to build as a result of their illegal or semi legal status, infrastructure and services are usually inadequate. There are essentially three defining characteristics that help us to understand squatter settlements, the physical, the social and the legal with the reasons behind them interrelated.

a) PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS
A squatter’s settlement due to its inherent non-legal status has services and infrastructure below the “adequate” or minimum level such service are both network and social infrastructure like water supply, sanitation, electricity, roads and drainage, schools, health center, market places etc water supply for example to individual households may be absent, or a few public community stand pipes may have been provided, using either the city networks or a hand pump itself. Informal network for the supply of water may also be in place. Similar arrangement may be made for electricity, drainage, toilets facilities etc. With little dependence and public authorities.
b) SOCIAL CHARACTERISTICS
Squatter settlement households belong to the lower income groups, either working as wage labour or in various informal sectors enterprises. On an average, most earn wages at or near the minimum wage level. But household income level can also be high due to many income earners and part time jobs. Squatter are predominantly migrants either rural or urban or urban-urban. The key characteristics that delineate a squatter settlement is its lack of ownership of the land parcel which they have build their houses. This could be vacant government or public land, or marginal land parcels like railways set back or “undesirable marshy land”. Thus, when the land is not under “productive” use by the owner, it is appropriated by a squatter for building a house, it has to be here that land owner may “rent” out his land for a nominal fee to a family or families, with an informal or quasi legal arrangement, which is not however valid under the law.